Hacker News Reader

Comment by grugq | Hacker News Reader

It is covered in the Complaint. Essentially someone using the alias FriendlyChemist (FC) gained illegal access to a vendor's account, and possibly to a lot more. This gave FC a large trove of PII on SilkRoad buyers and sellers (names, addresses, etc). FC attempted to blackmail Dread Pirate Roberts (DPR) saying he would release the information publicly unless DPR paid him $500,000... which he needed because he was in debt to his upstream drug supplier.

DPR then asked to be put in contact with the upstream supplier so he could "sort something out".

The timeline of events is here: http://grugq.tumblr.com/post/62928607375/dread-pirate-robert...

View on HN

Sorry, I meant the question to be a bit more meta. You don't usually wake up and find yourself in "oh shit, I need a hitman" situations out of the blue. It takes some work to get there.

Is the premise here that nobody should ever put themselves into situations where they cannot rely on law enforcement and the justice systems to resolve disputes and incidents?

Shipping companies semi-frequently seem to find themselves in situations where the wake up and think "Oh shoot, I need to hire some mercenaries." It takes some work to get into that sort of situation, but does that imply that they shouldn't have gotten themselves into that pickle?

It implies I am less sympathetic to his plight. Put yourself in a hard place, expect to make hard decisions.

In the case of mercenaries or bodyguards or whatever, that is exactly the kind of precaution one can take to avoid being in a truly nasty pickle.

If you are running a massive international illicit market worth billions, you are probably going to require that service sooner or later, unless you can walk away from it.

> "... gained illegal access to a vendor's account..."

Kind of off topic, but suppose "FC" were arrested, could this person be charged with malicious entry into an otherwise illegal enterprise?

Do those legal rights extend to people who had already been breaking laws?

Obviously, a bank robber has a right to not to be murdered by another bank robber. But can the other bank robber be charged with stealing the victim's ill-gotten money in addition to the murder?

Thought experiment: compare and contrast weev and FC.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com